“But you are not going yet, my dear,” said the queen. “Why you are not forty! And
young people will be young people. You were quite proud when poor Dick came home with his first brace of gigantic fierce birds, killed off his own sword, and with such a pretty princess he had rescued—dear Jaqueline? I’m sure she is like a daughter to me. I cannot do without her.”
“I wish she were a daughter-in-law; I wish Dick would take a fancy to marry her,” said the king. “A nicer girl I never saw.”
“And so accomplished,” added Queen Rosalind. “That girl can turn herself into anything—a mouse, a fly, a lion, a wheelbarrow, a church! I never knew such talent for magic. Of course she had the best of teachers, the Fairy Paribanou herself; but very few girls, in our time, devote so many hours to practice as dear Jaqueline. Even now, when she is out of the schoolroom, she still practises her scales. I saw her turning little Dollie into a fish and
back again in the bath-room last night. The child was delighted.”
In these times, you must know, princesses learned magic, just as they learn the piano nowadays; but they had their music lessons too, dancing, calisthenics, and the use of the globes.
“Yes, she’s a dear, good girl,” said the king; “yet she looks melancholy. I believe, myself, that if Ricardo asked her to marry him, she would not say ‘No.’ But that’s just one of the things I object to most in Dick. Round the world he goes, rescuing ladies from every kind of horror—from dragons, giants, cannibals, magicians; and then, when a girl naturally expects to be married to him, as is usual, off he rides! He has no more heart than a flounder. Why, at his age I—”
“At his age, my dear, you were so hard-hearted that you were quite a proverb. Why,
I have been told that you used to ask girls dreadful puzzling questions, like ‘Who was Cæsar Borgia?’ ‘What do you know of Edwin and Morcar?’ and so on.”
“I had not seen you then,” said the king.